Figurative Language
Figurative language means more than it says. Raining cats and dogs is not about animals, it is about hard rain, and learning to hear the meaning behind the words is its own kind of reading.
Slang talks in pictures and the Mayor takes him at his word every time, and the gap between them is the whole lesson: a figure of speech means more than its words say.
The full Word Hoard cycle is coming.
A saying whose words do not add up to its meaning.
In a sentenceI studied all week, so the test was a piece of cake.
Play it in the Arcade.
Take it onto the floor with the live game. Free, and it plays daily.
No figurative game is on the floor yet, so start next door: every Word Detective case is a sentence with one mystery word, and cracking its meaning from the words around it is the same reading a figure of speech asks for. Slang Says, the figurative game, is coming.
Play Word Detective →Do not take a figure of speech at its word.
She has a green thumb.
Taken literally, this sounds like her thumb is the color green. It is not. That is the Mayor reading it the wrong way.
She has a green thumb.
It means she is very good at growing plants. A green thumb is an idiom for a gardener's skill, and Slang knew that all along.
A real vocabulary skill, Grades 3 through 8.
Figurative Language is one of the seven ways Grammaropolis teaches vocabulary, each mapped to a Common Core vocabulary strand. The Wonderful Words workbooks are standards-cited today across Common Core, Texas TEKS, Florida B.E.S.T., and New York Next Gen, and the per-grade digital alignment arrives with the cycle.
Teachers know these as word-learning strategies.
CCSS L.x.5.a and L.x.5.b (similes, metaphors, idioms, adages, and proverbs; begins at grade 3 with literal vs nonliteral).
See it in the Standards Explorer →Other ways to know a word.
Back to Wonderful Words → Try the Sentence Factory → Wonderful Words workbook →